


murder on a thursday

by eosandselene



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band), TWICE (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/F, Gaslighting, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Mild Gore, Murder, but not between yeri and chaeyoung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24837043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eosandselene/pseuds/eosandselene
Summary: There is blood everywhere.It sinks into her jeans and soaks her skin. It pools around her in watery puddles. Yeri has never thought about the consistency of blood before, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she had assumed it would be thicker.
Relationships: Kim Yerim | Yeri/Son Chaeyoung
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	murder on a thursday

**Author's Note:**

> this is very short and not much happens but i hope you enjoy it anyway ! also i marked this as 'chose not to use archive warnings' bc I'm not sure if it counts as 'graphic' violence, but it might, so be careful!

There is blood everywhere.

It sinks into her jeans and soaks her skin. It pools around her in watery puddles. Yeri has never thought about the consistency of blood before, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she had assumed it would be thicker.

The floor is sticky, and not just from her blood. She can smell the cloying synthetic lemon smell from the spilled soda - god, how long ago was that? It feels like hours. It can’t have been more than thirty minutes.

Her leg throbs as it bleeds but she can’t tell how much of the liquid around her is her own and how much is...his.

He’s lying in front of her. His eyes are glassy, pupils unfocused, but his chest is still heaving, stuttering up and down in some unheard staccato beat. He’s still breathing, even if just barely. Soon, he won’t be. Soon, she won't be either. She thinks she’s okay with that. An eye for an eye. A life for a life.

Distantly, she can hear someone calling her name - Joy, maybe? She’s not sure. She looks down at the hole in her jeans and then across the room at her - at the man slumped on the floor. There are sirens getting louder and louder, and hands are on her shoulders, under her armpits, dragging her up.  _ We have to go,  _ the voice says, and she’s still not sure who it is.

She’s not sure of anything anymore.

And then she wakes up.

“You look tired,” Wendy says, as they shuffle into class alongside each other. “Have you been having those dreams again?”

The scar on Yeri’s leg throbs, painfully. A physical reminder to match the constant, unending psychological ones. “It’s not a dream,” she murmurs. She’s had this argument countless times before, but they all refuse to listen. She’s lost count of the number of times Seulgi and Irene have screamed at her over this, or have told her to let it go. Wendy only laughs, high and pretty and  _ fake _ . Her fingers dig into Yeri’s wrist, painfully.

They aren’t even trying to be subtle, anymore.

“Don’t be silly,” Wendy says. “Of course it’s a dream. What else could it be, hm?” She sounds playful, like she’s teasing, but Yeri can hear the steel underneath. She doesn’t reply, and Wendy lets her go, leaving to take her place at the front of the classroom like the good TA she is.

Half the time, Yeri doesn't even know what class she’s in. Days go by without her noticing, the world folds itself into complicated patterns around her, but for all her lost time, she isn't stupid. She knows what happened that night. She knows what she did.

The phantom grip of the man she once called her father claws at her throat, scratching. The bite of his knife against her leg is painful, even now, years later. Her friends can pretend it never happened all they want. They think they’re protecting her. It isn’t working.

Nothing makes her feel worse than feeling like she’s crazy. She knows what happened. She  _ does _ .

Most of the lecture goes by her in a haze. If someone asks her for her notes she’s going to be screwed - there’s nothing in her notebook other than the ambiguous  _ psychology and sociology - interpersonal relations  _ title she puts at the top of every page of notes for this class. Usually, this module is pretty engaging but, after last night, she just doesn’t have the energy.

The ‘ _ dreams’ _ have been getting more and more frequent. She thinks it’s probably a sign.

She pretends not to notice the alarm on her phone, reminding her to take her medication. It’s not going to be a problem anymore.

  
  
  


Son Chaeyoung is sitting at her table. That isn’t normal, but it’s not abnormal either. Yeri is friends with Nayeon, who is Chaeyoung’s sister’s girlfriend. They take some of the same classes, they attend the same parties. They used to talk a lot, before. Chaeyoung is not a stranger to her.

Yeri had spaced out staring into her fried rice, and when she looked up it was to Chaeyoung sat across from her. She is sitting opposite Yeri, eating a plate of chips and reading a well-worn book with practised disinterest.

Her hair is different from the last time they spoke - the long orange curls have been replaced with a choppy bleach blonde look, all sharp angles sitting on her shoulders. Her makeup is different too, no wings on her eyeliner and more highlight on her cheeks. The physical reminder of the passage of time slaps Yeri in the face.

Yeri doesn't know what to do - usually, she sits with Wendy, but she had a special TA meeting to attend. She hasn't eaten lunch with anyone other than Wendy in months.

“Hello,” She says, but it’s been too long since she last said anything, her voice is scratchy and her throat is raw. She takes a sip of her iced coffee and tries again. “Hello, Chaeyoung.”

Chaeyoung looks up, dog-earring her page and smiling. “Hello, Yerim.” 

If it were a year ago, this would be when Yeri started to flirt, maybe tuck a strand of Chaeyoung’s hair behind her ear.

But Yeri from a year ago had a father. She had a healthy sleep schedule, and good relationships and was  _ this _ close to getting a third date with the girl of her dreams. Today’s Yeri doesn't have any of that. She has an ugly, jagged scar on her thigh and pot of her father’s ashes making it’s home on her mother’s dresser. This is the most she’s spoken to Chaeyoung in weeks.

Yeri doesn’t know what to say to her, so she doesn’t say anything. Neither does Chaeyoung. They just sit there, at a corner table in cafeteria three, eating their lunches in silence.

  
  
  


The rest of the day passes her by in a daze. Joy picks her up at lunch and walks her to her last class, then after that drives her back to the dorms. She does her reading in Wendy’s room and waits patiently for dinner. 

After that, she’ll go to her room until bedtime, just like every night. One of the others will sleep with her, probably Seulgi. They’ll lie together in the dark, silently. Pretending everything is okay, that it’s just like the sleepovers they used to have in high school.

It’s been months since they last had a real sleepover.

Yeri thinks of that night, of how it was supposed to be a fun night with her closest friends. She thinks of her mother’s dead-eyed grief and the way it shrouds her constantly. Every time Yeri goes home, the words try and claw themselves out of her throat like spiders. 

She remembers  _ before _ , and she remembers  _ after _ , but  _ during  _ is fuzzy for her. She remembers the scream, and then she was… holding a knife? And then her father was holding a knife, and then she remembers the pain. She has a vague recollection of Seulgi wrapping and rewrapping her leg every couple of hours, desperately trying to calm her down. Everything else is numb.

She feels like she’s going crazy. Maybe wendy is right, and this is all one big grief fueled nightmare. But she can’t shake the feeling of guilt that claws its way up her spine and into her throat every time she sees her mother grieve. Holding a knife feels familiarly dangerous.

And, of course, there is the scar.

The police said it was a break-in. Someone thought the house was empty and was surprised by yeri in the kitchen, and tried to kill her. Her father heard the commotion and saved her, losing his own life in the process. It's a story corroborated by Seulgi, Joy and Wendy, and Irene swears she woke up to hear someone running away from the house.

But, if that is true, why was Yeri holding a knife? Why does she remember plunging it into the meat of her father’s chest? And, why does she want to do the same to any of the boys at university who leer at her friends?

Her memories are foggy, but she holds them as close as she can. She doesn't feel like she’s crazy. She feels like a monster.

  
  
  


Chaeyoung doesn’t disappear again. She sits next to Yeri in the few lectures they share, they eat lunch together on Wednesdays, and over the weekends Chaeyoung sends her cat memes and screenshots of funny tweets.

Yeri doesn't want to say it’s normal, but it’s pretty damn close. It’s as if the last three months of her ignoring Chae never happened. Irene seems happy for Chaeyoung to come over, inviting her to dinner whenever they see each other. She’s turned down politely each time, and Yeri has the distinct feeling that it’s because Chae’s waiting for an invite to come from Yeri, and not just one of her friends.

If that’s the case, then she won't have to wait long.

Yeri and Chaeyoung are doing completely different courses, but they share a psychology lecture. They decided at the beginning of the year that they would be partners for any group projects that came up, and now, months later, that promise comes to fruition.

“It should be pretty easy,” Chaeyoung says at the end of their Thursday lecture. “It’s just a discussion followed by a response paper and a five-minute presentation.”

Yeri doesn’t share her optimism. “We have to tell each other secrets, though.”

Chaeyoung hums thoughtfully and runs a hand through her hair. The roots are coming through and it’s now long enough to reach past her shoulders. It still looks amazing. “It doesn’t have to be a big one. Actually, maybe it shouldn’t be? It would be a good juxtaposition if one of us gave a big secret and the other gave a small one, we could use that in the paper to discuss differing trust levels.”

Chaeyoung keeps spitballing ideas until they reach the cafeteria, all bright smiles and natural enthusiasm. It’s terrifying. Yeri only has one secret. At the beginning of the year, she probably would have had plenty, but her life has revolved around one event for the last few months and anything that wasn’t important just… fell to the wayside. She has nothing else to hide.

But her secret isn’t the sort of thing she can tell to Chaeyoung, and it’s definitely not the sort of secret she can write about for a university paper. It’s a secret for a reason, and she doesn’t feel like going to prison for something she doesn’t even remember, even if she does deserve to.

So instead she smiles and nods along with Chaeyoung, and prays for help from any higher power that will listen. 

  
  
  


Chaeyoung agrees to meet her at the twenty-four-hour McDonalds opposite the main campus on Friday evening. Yeri gets there a little late because of her evening lectures, and when she arrives, Chaeyoung is already sitting in a corner booth, waiting for her.

Her hair isn’t the blonde choppy styled mess it was yesterday. Now it is short and sleek in a black bob, with no chance of roots showing through. She’s got a pretty peachy lipstick on, and it’s very distracting. Yeri has to remind herself to look at Chaeyoung’s eyes as she makes her way over to where her project partner is sitting.

Yeri is wearing the same thing she wore to her last lecture; black dungarees and one of Seulgi’s thick woolly jumpers. Looking at Chaeyoung, effortlessly cool in all her artsy, paint-splattered jean shorts and lacy blouse glory, she feels woefully underdressed.

Chaeyoung smiles at her over the rim of a soda can. “I couldn’t decide which Mcflurry to get. So I bought one of each. Please, help yourself!” She gestures to the four ice cream cups in front of her.

She looks at Chaeyoung uncertainly. It makes sense that Chaeyoung isn’t completely terrified the way Yeri is, but sharing secrets isn’t a comfortable thing even if your secret isn't ‘probable murder’. How does Chaeyoung manage to look so calm and relaxed? Yeri slides into the seat opposite her and pulls her bag onto her lap.

“Um… How do you want to do this?” She asks. “I wrote out the list of questions from the PowerPoint if you wanted to go through them?” She rummages through her bag for her uni folder, but Chaeyoung just shakes her head.

“Actually, I thought we could maybe talk for a bit? We could work up to doing the whole, you know, spilling our biggest secrets thing?” She smiles kindly, and hey, when she puts it like that...

“Uh, yeah, sure. What did you want to talk about, then?”

Chaeyoung looks at her appraisingly. It’s not like when Joy or Seulgi look at her. Under their gaze, it’s hard not to feel as if she has been weighed and found wanting, like she is a child on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum and everyone wants to keep her calm so it doesn’t happen. Chaeyoung’s look just makes the tips of her fingers tingle, bright and warm and electric.

“Take a Mcflurry first, seriously,” Chae says.

“No, it's fine, I can buy my own.”

“Eat a Mcflurry or two first. Seriously, I bought way too many!” Yeri hesitates, and Chaeyoung pushes one of the cups towards her. “Please, you’ll be doing me a favour. They’re melting,”

Yeri takes the ice cream.

By the time they’ve finished eating, most of the obligatory small talk is over with. They’ve discussed their favourite lecturers and gossiped about the few friends they have in common - Tzuyu and Mark, namely.

Under normal circumstances, this would be enough to calm her down but Yeri’s panic is slowly building, like a tsunami of dread. What is she supposed to say? This is no middle school crush or thefted chewing gum, her secret would put Chaeyoung at risk.

She knows she should just lie, make literally anything up. But lying to Chaeyoung would be almost as bad as telling her the truth.

There is a puddle of liquid cream at the bottom of Yeri’s cup and a pool of ice in her stomach. She’s never been very good at lying, but she knows how to protect. The scar on her leg is a testament to that. She’ll do it if she has to.

There’s a lull in the conversation and Chaeyoung bites at her lip as they look at each other. “Do you want to go first or should I?”

“Definitely you,” Yeri says. “Come on then, what’s the art department’s golden girl got to hide?”

Chaeyoung scrunches her nose at the title but considers the question seriously. “I suppose I would say my biggest secret is...” she pauses and assesses Yeri carefully. “Hmm. I guess my biggest secret is probably that I’m a lesbian.”

Yeri blinks. Of all the things she thought Chaeyoung might say, this was probably at the bottom of the list, if it even made the list at all. “Everyone knows that,” she says, and then considers that maybe that isn’t the most tactful way to approach this situation. Thankfully, Chaeyoung is already laughing.

“Sure, everyone at uni knows. My parents don’t, though.” she sips at her soda carefully. “And they’re not going to, at least not until I’ve moved out. My dad would kill me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Chaeyoung repeats, and Yeri just knows that she’s being sincere. She’s got the same look in her eyes that Seulgi gets when Yeri starts thumbing at the scar on her leg or gets a little too lost in thought while holding a knife.

She doesn’t know why she says what she does. It just… comes out. One minute she’s thinking of Seulgi and her quiet admonishment, desperately trying to think of a passable lie in the back of her mind, and the next she wants Chaeyoung to know exactly what’s inside her head, wants to show her that understands even just a fraction of what Chaeyoung lives with.

“Speaking of fathers and murder,” she says, poking around in the liquid remains of her own ice cream. “I killed mine last year.”

Chaeyoung, to her credit, doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry or recoil or try to run away. She definitely looks startled, but it's an infinitely better reaction than Yeri had hoped for, had expected.

“When you say killed-”

“Yeah, I mean killed.” Somewhere, on the other side of town, Yeri knows Joy just woke up in a cold sweat. “Apparently, I stabbed him in the throat. It was super gross. I mean, I don’t remember it but the bloodstains didn’t come out from under my nails for days.”

“Wait - what do you mean, you don’t remember it?” Chaeyoung asks quietly, but she still doesn’t look scared, just uncomfortably curious. She hasn't moved since Yeri confessed. “How could you not remember?”

Yeri thinks about her question for a moment, stirring her spoon around in the empty cup. it’s something she’s put a lot of thought into, something her friends have spent hours puzzling over. They’re still not any closer to figuring out an answer.

“I don’t know. I remember him screaming at me, and I remember him grabbing a knife and coming for me, and the next thing I know I’m on the floor, bleeding out from my thigh, and he’s… well, dead.” She doesn’t mention that she hadn’t been alone, and neither had her father. It’s one thing to incriminate herself in a McDonalds at seven o’clock in the evening surrounded by empty Mcflurry cups. It would be another thing entirely to involve her friends, who have done nothing but protect her. “I left before the cops arrived and as far as I can tell, nobody else knows I was there. They're still looking for his murderer.”

“That doesn’t sound like murder, Yeri. That sounds like self-defence.”

There’s something so intimate about hearing her name said from the mouth of someone who knows exactly what she’s done and isn’t scared of her. It feels liberating. Yeri wants to grab Chaeyoung and never let go, wants to spill every emotion she’s ever had out of her heart and into Chaeyoung’s waiting palms. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead.

“Maybe,” She says instead. “But I’d never be able to prove it. He was a homophobic police officer who attended church every Sunday, and I was a recently outed satanist lesbian. It wouldn’t have gone well for me.”

Chaeyoung nods weakly. “I hope you don't take this the wrong way,” she says calmly. “But when we do our assignment, I’m just going to say your biggest secret is that you’re scared of spiders.”

Yeri chokes out a laugh. “Yeah,” She says. “That's probably for the best.”

**Author's Note:**

> i dont have any explanation, i just wanted some unhinged lesbians and it devolved into this ! if you think I should add/change any tags or warnings or the rating then let me know !


End file.
